From individual decisions to collective behaviour

Time
Monday, 8. August 2022
11:45 - 12:45

Location
M627

Organizer
CASCB

Speaker:
Wolfgang Gaissmaier

This event is part of an event series „Summer Seminar Series“.

View the recording of Gaissmaier's talk here

Wolfgang Gaissmaier will present at the CASCB regular Monday seminar on "From individual decisions to collective behaviour"

The study of human collective behavior has a long tradition across many disciplines. In the talk, I’d like to illustrate how psychological research on the cognitive mechanisms underlying individual decisions can contribute to our understanding of collective phenomena, but also how, in turn, studying collective behavior can provide insights about individuals. Specifically, I am interested in the question how individual behaviors (and biases) translate into collective phenomena: When and how do collectives (or groups) outperform individuals, and when and how do they fail to do so? I will provide examples from our own research to show how aggregation and consensus decision making can aid performance, but also examples in which social influence yields an amplification rather than an alleviation of small individual biases.